READ ALL ABOUT IT
Since 2012, I’ve been writing about books. And the act of reading. And the importance of story and narrative. But, mostly, the underlying theme of all I write is how taking a moment to stop and digest some longform text — instead of scrolling, instead of watching a video, instead of multitasking — can be one of the most grounding things we can do for ourselves. Here’s the one-stop online home for all this writing.
You can read more about me and my work by moseying over here. Want to peruse periodic “essay drops” — excerpts from my work-in-progress essay collection about Homesickness? Here ya go.
Viet Thanh Nguyen: “A Disturbing Book Changed My Life”
“Book banning” is not new, but in the past year or so, challenges to books have popped up in headlines with more frequency. The latest, of course, is a school board in Tennessee removing Maus by Art Spiegelman from classrooms. But let’s see…we also have school district north of Seattle removing To Kill a Mockingbird from its required reading list and a mom in Texas has a fixation with a passing reference to anal sex in Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez.
A Real Education: On Tan Twan Eng's The Garden of Evening Mists & What We Read in School
I’m about to sound either really clueless or really curious.
Here’s a sampling of some of the questions I asked myself as I read The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng. Why is everyone referring to Malaya, and not Malaysia? Pearl Harbor was not Japan’s “official entrance” into World War II? Why is there a South African living in Cameron Highlands? And the Boer War: What was that again? Perhaps I should be a little embarrassed to admit my ignorance about the Eastern World despite, I think, being reasonably informed about general global history and geography. But my reading of Tan’s lushly and quietly beautiful novel about the Japanese Occupation and its lasting effects on protagonist Yun Ling took me constantly to Google; the result of my reading was not just another wonderful story embedded in my heart, but also a small step forward in understanding a greater world.
